Thursday, July 27, 2017

We started sleeping together whenever the Captain was gone, which seemed to be a lot. And I don't guess we actually slept all that much. What we did was...well it was what we did. Occasionally one or the other (or both of us) was left bruised and sometimes bloody by what we did to each other. Neither one of us complained.

Once I had a girl friend (she was married and I was too) and I asked her what I had permission to do to her. She replied "anything you want as long as it doesn't leave marks for my husband to see". I asked Sydney (yeah, her) and the answer I got was "anything you want that doesn't kill me or leave me crippled".

I don't how she managed to have such clear and innocent turquoise eyes. She'd been through a lot. She had these cut scars on the inside of her thighs and upper arms like four long series of slash marks ///////. I found out much later they are usually signs of self cutting. Teenage girls seem to do it a lot when they feel they have no control over their lives.

She also had scars on her back that looked an awful lot like cigarette burns.

Sometimes she cried when she slept.

She would call me whenever the captain was away on some ocean or Great Lakes voyage. Usually he was gone for long periods--weeks even. We would arrange to meet and off we would go, into whatever world we were living in. Yeah, my performance for my employer wasn't the best and I lost a job or two, but it was just so easy to find another flying job back in the late seventies.

We did do other things. She'd come up with some idea and it wasn't long before I was thoroughly sold that nothing else would do me but to do whatever she thought of. Or maybe I thought of. I was no longer sure.

It started innocently enough...go see some sight or museum. She bought us motorcycles and we learned to ride them.

Learned to shoot guns--I had enough guns in the Marines but it was what she wanted to do and so it was OK with me.

Then she wanted to do other things. Or was it me?

We stole a car and took a joy ride. Then another one, and burnt it to the ground.

Then we robbed a 7-11 for a thrill. Then another. And somehow the clerk got shot.

Listen, I have to tell you our time together was like compressed somehow. These things happened over a horribly short period of time.

The whole sorry mess probably took less than six months. Just six months and my life was over.